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Pragmatism Quotes

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Pragmatism Quotes

“Christianity exhorted man to set himself up against Nature, but did so in the name of his spiritual and disinterested attributes. Pragmatism exhorts him to do so in the name of his practical attributes. Formerly man was divine because he had been able to acquire the concept of justice, the idea of law, the sense of God; today he is divine because he has been able to create equipment which makes him the master of matter.”

MenHas BeensIdeasMatterTodayAbleSpiritualLawNamesJusticeChristianityDivineMastersConceptsPracticalsAcquireAttributesEquipmentPragmatismDisinterested
Book:The Treason of the Intellectuals
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“Man is by nature a pragmatic materialist, a mechanic, a lover of gadgets and gadgetry; and these are the qualities that characterize the "establishment" which regulates modern society: pragmatism, materialism, mechanization, and gadgetry. Woman, on the other hand, is a practical idealist, a humanitarian with a strong sense of noblesse oblige, an altruist rather than a capitalist.”

MenHandsStrongQualityModernLoversHumanitarianPracticalsMaterialismEstablishmentCapitalistMechanicPragmaticIdealistModern SocietyGadgetsPragmatismMechanizationNoblesse Oblige
Author:Elizabeth Gould Davis
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“Pragmatism , in trying to turn experimental physics into a prototype of all science and to model all spheres of intellectual life after the techniques of the laboratory, is the counterpart of modern industrialism, for which the factory is the prototype of human existence, and which models all branches of culture after production on the conveyor belt.”

TryingHumansTurnsCultureExistenceModernIntellectualModelsProductionsTechniquePhysicsBranchesSpheresFactoriesBeltsLaboratoryHuman ExistencePragmatismCounterpartsPrototypeIntellectual Life
Book:EPZ Eclipse of Reason
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“In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, ... the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief that is enjoyed by its adherents.”

MadeIdeasMomentsMightFacesHumanityTurnsFatherBeliefGivenSubjectsPossibilityOppositesHistoricalSpeciesSatisfactionDoctrineEnjoyedCriticizeShockingCriteriaRejectingPragmatism
Book:Eclipse of Reason
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“I do believe in God, but I think it's very healthy for a believer to spend time in the pragmatism of agnosticism, and I think God appreciates agnostics trying to make a science of it and going, "I will not believe any further than that." I enjoy that kind of engineering mind. In no way did it ever feel blasphemous to me as a man of faith.”

ThinkingMenWayFeelsTryingMindBelieveKindEnjoyHealthyAppreciateBelieverBelieve In GodEngineeringEnd TimesSpend TimeAgnosticismPragmatism
Author:Matthew McConaughey
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“The perennial architectural debate has always been, and will continue to be, about art versus use, visions versus pragmatism, aesthetics versus social responsibility. In the end, these unavoidable conflicts provide architecture's essential and productive tensions; the tragedy is that so little of it rises above the level imposed by compromise, and that this is the only work most of us see and know.”

KnowsLittlesArtEndsUseSocialLevelsResponsibilityVisionConflictEssentialsTragedyArchitectureDebateCompromiseTensionProductiveSocial ResponsibilityVersusRise AboveAestheticsPragmatism
Book:On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change
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“The real, then, is that which, sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, the very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.”

RealShowsRealityCommunityResultsInformationLimitsCapableIncreaseIndependentNotionReasoningConceptionRealismSooner Or LaterDefinitePragmatismReality Shows
Book:Selected Writings (Values in a Universe of Chance)
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“As the biocentric view suggests, the garden prospers when control is balanced by equal measures of humility and benevolence. A balance is struck. Control, servitude, respect, imagination, pragmatism, an ecological conscience, compliance, and a certain measure of mysticism and altruism, all meld together to provide nurturance.”

CareTogetherCertainImaginationViewsCompassionHumilityBalanceEqualEssentialsConscienceGardenGenerosityMysticismGardeningBalancedAltruismBenevolenceEcologicalServitudePragmatismCompliance
Book:Why We Garden: Cultivating a Sense of Place
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“What's impossible not to notice, though - it's all around us - is the diminution of American prose: How pedestrian it has become. Pick up any short story and listen to its voice, the tedious easy vernacular that mistakes transcription for realism. This would display an understandable pragmatism if it were a pandering to common-denominator readers; but it is, in fact, a kind of hifalultin literary ideology, the less-is-more Hemingway legacy put through an up-to-the-minute industrial blender.”

IfsKindFactsStoriesEasyVoiceCommonMistakeImpossibleMinutesReaderPicksIdeologyLegacyProseShort StoryDisplayRealismTediousPragmatismCommon DenominatorPedestriansLess Is MoreVernacularBlendersTranscription
Author:Cynthia Ozick
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“I've had a chance to meet some of my civil rights heroes and, more recently, members of the young generation around [Barack] Obama, people in their teens and twenties who were determined to make history and who were too idealistic to think that what they were trying to do might be impossible. They proved that visionary pragmatism can win over the majority. That comes from a particular place in your heart that generation Y is offering America. They just can't afford to be naive now, in terms of the ferocity of the opposition.”

PeopleThinkingTryingHeartMightAmericaYoungWinningTermChanceRightsImpossibleGenerationsParticularHeroMembersTwentiesMajorityDeterminedCivil RightsBarackOppositionOfferingTeensNaiveVisionariesPragmatismIdealisticFerocityYoung GenerationGeneration Y
Author:Van Jones
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“Pragmatism asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?”

IfsIdeasDifferentTruthValuesAsksBeliefTermDifferencesTruth IsBeing TrueGrantsUsualCashConcretePragmatismActual Life
Book:Pragmatism
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“In many places it is literally not safe physically for youngsters to go to school. And in many schools, and its becoming almost generally true, it is spiritually unsafe to attend public schools. Look back over the history of education to the turn of the century and the beginning of the educational philosophies, pragmatism and humanism were the early ones, and they branched out into a number of other philosophies which have led us now into a circumstance where our schools are producing the problems that we face.”

LooksPhilosophyProblemSchoolFacesTurnsNumbersCenturyBecomingCircumstancesSafeHumanismEducationalPublic SchoolYoungstersPublic EducationPragmatismUnsafeGeneral Education
Author:Boyd K. Packer
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“It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities.”

IfsMenWayChildrenFactsWould BePoliticalExistenceProveValuableDefenseProofArguingLogicalEnduranceExtensionsSantaSanta ClausPragmatismImbecility
Book:Minority Report
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“There is no trickier subject for a writer from the South than that of affection between a black person and a white one in the unequal world of segregation. For the dishonesty upon which a society is founded makes every emotion suspect, makes it impossible to know whether what flowed between two people was honest feeling or pity or pragmatism.(Howell Raines's Pulitzer Prize winning article "Grady's Gift")-Sockett admired this quote and used it in her summary.”

PeopleKnowsWorldPersonsTwoFeelingsUsedWinningBlackWhiteEmotionImpossibleSubjectsHonestSouthAffectionPityPrizeSuspectsArticlesSegregationDishonestyPragmatismSummaryBlack PersonPrize Winning
Book:The Help
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“The disappearance of theology from the life of the Church, and the orchestration of that disappearance by some of its leaders, is hard to miss today, but oddly enough, not easy to prove. It is hard to miss in the evangelical world--in the vacuous worship that is so prevalent, for example, in the shift form God to the self as the central focus of faith, in the psychologized preaching that follows this shift, in the erosion of its conviction, in its strident pragmatism, in its inability to think incisively about the culture, in its reveling in the irrational.”

ThinkingWorldSelfHardEnoughTodayFormCultureEasyChurchLeaderFocusMissingExampleProveWorshipConvictionTheologyPreachingIrrationalInabilityEvangelicalProve ItDisappearancePragmatismErosionOrchestrationVacuous
Author:David F. Wells
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